


Frozen Prelude

by BalunStormhands



Category: Frozen (2013)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-16
Updated: 2013-08-16
Packaged: 2017-12-23 15:19:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,029
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/928049
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BalunStormhands/pseuds/BalunStormhands
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There are some things that can be gleaned from the clips and trailers about Elsa of Arendelle. Her story is the fight between herself and the magic that rages within her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Frozen Prelude

**Author's Note:**

> Author's Note: I have no idea how Disney's Frozen will play out, but I was wondering how Elsa's ice powers started to manifest and came up with this character sketch. Enjoy.

Frozen Prelude: So It Begins

"I'm so proud of you," said Mother as she clasped the red beaded bracelet around Elsa's wrist.

"Thank you, mother." replied Elsa, feeling a little embarrassed, but enjoyed the hug mother wrapped her in.

"Dear, are you alright? You feel so cold." asked Mother holding her daughter at arms length.

"I feel really warm." Elsa began fanning herself, "Could I have some water please?"

"Of course, dear." Mother quickly poured some water from the pitcher into a mug and gave it to her daughter, who drank it quickly.

"Feeling better?"

"Yes, mother. Thank you."

"Well, your body is changing and you will feel things from time to time, but it should be fine. If you feel more strange then you are comfortable with talk to me."

"Yes, mum. Thank you mum."

"You're welcome. Come, let's go to the town for something special for you."

"Oh goody!" Elsa squealed, clapping her hands after putting down the mug on the kitchen table.

In their excitement, they didn't notice the rime of ice on the mug.

Frozen Prelude: A Cold Night

Elsa was so sleepy, it was really early, but she was so cold too. She rolled over and snuggled the blankets close. Her eyes snapped open as the blankets crunched as she moved. 

There was ice and snow all over her bed. 

She looked around. Cold air was swirling in through the slightly open window onto her.

It was Fall but this seemed like an early frost, she gathered her blanket and carefully dumped the ice out of the window. It landed with a clatter in the courtyard below. 

Elsa looked to her sister Anna sleeping across the room, but Anna just snorted and slept on.

Elsa tiptoed to the wardrobe and pulled out the extra blanket after laying her cold wet blanket over a chair.

She crawled back into bed and as she pulled the blanket over her she noticed the still open window. She got up and closed the window, just in case. 

As she snuggled under the blanket again, she shivered, but she wasn’t cold.

Frozen Prelude: First Snow

“It’s snowing!” Elsa squealed in a high-pitched voice that made people’s teeth hurt. She ran out the door and belly-flopped into the deep drift.

“Whee!” Else yelled as she threw snow up in the air and made a snow-angel. Then she danced around in the flakes. She had always loved winter and first snows were best for some reason.

“Elsa, you need your coat!” scolded mother.

“Yes, mother.” but she just smiled and danced over and slipped the coat on. She didn’t mind the cold at all. Anna waddled out covered in to many layers, but she looked happy too as she picked up some snow and made a snowball and they threw snowballs at each other.

Soon some boys attacked with snowballs of their own. The two sisters ducked behind a drift and fired back. Neither of them noticed that Elsa was just reaching into the snow and pulling out perfectly formed snowballs while Anna struggled to pack her own. 

The boys soon surrendered under the onslaught of Elsa’s snowballs. 

They then build a rather lopsided and lumpy snowman.

Anna stuck a large carrot in its face for a nose, “What should be call him?”

Elsa considered, “Olaf. That’s a good name.”

Just then parents called their children in for lunch. 

Elsa hugged her snowman, and said, “I like you.” Her palms tingled, but as they went inside she just thought it it was the cold from her soaking wet mittens, which she hung to dry by the fire. 

But after lunch the snowman was gone.

Frozen Prelude: The Accident

Elsa and Anna were placing dress-up having a good time pretending they are having a ball. They bowed and danced with each other to the sounds from the music box. 

As Elsa changed into a different outfit, Anna tackled her into the soft pile of clothes and begins to tickle her unmercifully. 

In between bouts of uncontrollable laughter Elsa screams “Stop!” 

Snow and ice blast out of her hands and threw her sister across the room leaving her under a pile of ice and snow.

“Anna?” Elsa scrambled out of the clothes and looks around. 

“Anna!” Elsa franticly dug her sister out of the snow, but Anna is cold, unconscious and her lips are blue.

“Mother!” Elsa raced for the door.

“Mummy! Help!”

# # #

Soon they are with the doctor. Anna is wrapped in warm blankets and she is pink again, she had woken slightly but was asleep again. Elsa was trying to explain what happened but it was difficult since she didn’t understand what happened. 

“Ah, you, dear child, have magic in you. Apparently you can control snow and ice.” said the doctor.

“Am I ...a monster?”

“No, not a monster. You’ll only be a monster if you let the magic control you and not you the magic.” said the doctor.

“Oh, okay. How do I control it?”

“I sorry. I don’t know. Only you can learn that.” said the doctor.

Elsa looked at her mother with concerned eyes. “I’ll try.”

“I know you will, dear. It’ll be okay. Just don’t let it happen again.” said Mother.

“Yes, Mother.”

Frozen Prelude: Gloves

“Mother, I need help.” said Elsa, her hands behind her back.

“What is it, dear?” Mother asked from behind her big desk.

Elsa bit her lip, the tiny flinches everyone made when they noticed her hurt so much. People feared her.

“I am having a hard time controlling, it, today.” Elsa brought her hands in front of her. Small wisps of snow flakes were curling up from her hands.

Mother’s eyes widened slightly. Then after a long beat she came around and put her hand on Elsa’s shoulder, Elsa hadn’t gotten a real hug from anyone since the accident with Anna.

“I’m sorry, but I am not sure how to help.”

“I know, but I am getting tired. There must be some way to protect people and things from my cold hands.” Elsa almost begged.

Mother frowned as she thought for a moment, then she brightened, “How about some gloves? They protect people from cold. That should help.”

“Okay.” Elsa said uncertainly, she was trying not to understand what Mother had said as excluding her from personhood. She wasn’t a monster! But her insides were all twisted together. 

They went to the dressing room and Mother had a maid bring out some gloves. Elsa picked out some nice light blue ones. She liked blue, blue was her favorite color. She slipped them on and turned her hands over. She felt a little better, no snow was escaping the gloves.

“There now, that’s better. It’s okay to ask for help. I need help too, that’s why I have barons.”

“Yes, Mother.”

“Why don’t you take the afternoon off and play with your sister, she misses you.”

Elsa shook her head. “I have to study. Princess lessons are harder now.” It was so hard to study and control her magic.

“Okay, dear. Run along, then. I need to get back to work too.” Mother kissed Elsa’s head and walk quickly away.

Elsa walked slowly back to her new room. She didn’t need to study. She didn’t dare be in the same room with her sister, if she could help it. She had asked for her own room not long after the incident. Sometimes when she was falling asleep it would get away from her and her bed would be flooded with snow and ice. The cold didn’t bother her anyway.

Elsa didn’t want to hurt Anna again. Anna had recovered from the accident, but she wasn’t the same. She was a little different, and not just that streak in her hair, she was not as graceful as she was. No one else noticed, but Elsa did. She knew her sister better then anyone, even the latest governess, and certainly Mother, who was so busy ruling Arendelle. She had broken her little sister, and that hurt so much.

Elsa was scared too. It was so hard to control the magic sometimes. She knew she would rule Arendelle someday, Mother was getting older and Father had been lost at sea long ago, but she wondered if she could do both.

Elsa went into her room, closed the curtains and curled up on her bed. It was getting to be too much. It felt like she was going to burst soon. She pulled off the gloves and held her palms out in front of her. She focused the magic into the space above her hands and made a large snowflake, it was as big as a dinner plate and it was so beautiful. She could make such amazingly complex patterns. It made her feel so good to make something from snow and ice. She made it rotate above her hands.

There was a knock at the door, and she heard the maid call, “Princess, are you in there? You are late for your geography lesson.” 

Guiltily sending the snowflake to melt in the washbasin she replied, “Yes, yes. I’ll be right there. One moment.” She walked toward the door, then stopped and retrieved the gloves. 

“Sorry about that, I was reading.”

Frozen Prelude: Coronation

Elsa locked the office door behind her and leaned on it as she took off her gloves. It was almost time for her coronation, but she needed a break to pull herself together. 

She sat at her mother’s desk and put her head down searching for some quiet inside her but there was nothing but a raging storm of magic. 

She was about to be queen, but she felt like such a fake. Was she a a good girl and a queen or a monster?

They were finally opening the castle doors after having been closed for years. Closed to keep her in. There were lots of excuses for doing that, but she knew the real reasons. They were scared, they were afraid she would lose control. So was she. She wished she could just let it go.

Elsa sat back and put her fists on the desk, slowly she opened them, palm up. The magic proved her a liar. Swirls of magic snow flowed up from her palms rising several inches now. She was so tired from everything, and the magic got harder to control when she was tired. 

Now, even Mother was gone and there was no one to turn to, not that Mother had really been there, she had been busy being queen.

The gloves helped contain the magic, but they sealed her off from people too. Everyone accepted that she wore gloves, without explanation or with lies. She hated the lies, so much of her life seemed tied up in lies. Sometimes she wished she could just unleash her power and be herself, but she wasn’t sure who she was. Was she a good girl or was she a monster?

She made three snowballs and began to juggle them. It was a mindless action now, something that relaxed her, allowed her not to think, but just be. 

She wished she could confide with her sister, or anyone really. She had hurt her sister and she felt so guilty about that, she didn’t want to hurt anyone, but she could barely restrain the magic some days. Elsa felt like a monster sometimes. So she stayed away from her sister, to protect her, to protect everyone, she hid all the time. 

She started as there was a knock on the door.

“Your Highness, the coronation is about to begin,” called the maid through the locked door.

“Yes, yes, of course. One moment,” called Elsa back as she launched the snowballs into the fireplace to make them go away. 

She sat at the desk, held her snow covered hands out and closed her eyes. Soon she was breathing heavily, but when she opened her eyes her palms were no longer emitting snow and ice. 

She pulled on the pale blue gloves, straightened her back and walked to the door. 

“I’m ready now.”

The end at least until the movie comes out.

**Author's Note:**

> Author’s Note: There is not a lot to go on to explore Elsa as a character. She has the power to control snow and ice. She is a princess that becomes queen, but something happens and she loses control of the magic and locks her kingdom in winter.   
> From the Teaser trailer we see she must have created Olaf but he seems like an accident.   
> The clip shows us Marshmallow who is fearsome but I get the feeling his orders are to keep people away from her for their own safety, and Elsa makes a beautiful snowflake and a blizzard to try and drive her sister away.   
> The Japanese trailer shows us Elsa running away but having a grand time using her magic.   
> There is a page from a storybook that tells us that Elsa hurt Anna by accident while they were playing.   
> Finally there is the clip of the song “Let It Go” Idina Menzel sang at D23, that is a very frightening song to me. That gives me the feeling that Elsa has been fighting the magic in her for a long time, and then it gets away from her and she embraces the magical monster that she believes she is. She isn’t the bad guy, but she has serious problems and only her sister Anna has any chance of reaching her.


End file.
